


Don’t Call It A Comeback

by ninetyfive



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Multi, Porn with Feelings, Soft Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 14:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21198818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninetyfive/pseuds/ninetyfive
Summary: The rehearsals of the upcoming reunion tour are not going well. Nothing is clicking. Mark thinks it’s because the band are no longer close to each other in a physical sense, but he doesn’t know how to say it out loud. Will the band ever get to return to the closeness that he so desperately misses?A short story about reconnecting, and why Take That will always love touching each other the most.





	Don’t Call It A Comeback

The rehearsals of the reunion tour (dubbed the "Ultimate Tour") started a week ago. They’re not going well. The boys’ moves are not in sync. Their vocals are average. They barely look at each other. They hardly smile. They’ve yet to agree on a setlist. Jason and Mark constantly argue. Gary keeps forgetting the dance routines. Mark worries about every tiny detail. Jason feels tired mentally and physically. Howard jokes that maybe they’re just getting older, but he can’t help but wonder if there’s more going on.

On Friday evening, five days after the rehearsals started, the boys leave their rehearsals feeling crestfallen. They were supposed to learn the dance routine to _Relight My Fire_ – a high-production number with a massive supporting cast and many questionable outfits, if Mark has any say in it – but they couldn’t get it right. Nothing was clicking. Gary kept ending up in the wrong place in the dance studio, and Howard and Mark constantly bumped into each other as they tried to exchange places. Jason had a permanent frown on his face. The boys seemed afraid of being near each other. None of them could remember the dance routine.

At the end of the day, their choreographer even told them it had been the “worst rehearsal by a pop group” he had ever witnessed.

‘I need you to really _think _about why things aren’t clicking,’ their choreographer said. ‘It’s like you’re not even in the same band together. If you continue performing like this, we might as well cancel the tour. It’s _that _bad, guys.’

Hearing that knocked the boys’ confidence a lot. They _know _something is missing – but what, they do not know. Something feels off.

They retreat to Mark’s house after rehearsals for an emergency band meeting. They’ve been having a lot of band meetings recently, but they’ve never had a band meeting when they were all feeling absolutely useless. They feel like shit for believing they could go back to how things were in the nineties, when they were Britain’s most successful pop group since The Beatles. Now, many years later, they’re really just four thirty-somethings with aching bodies and no recent hit songs to their names.

On paper, at least, Take That’s upcoming reunion tour has already been a massive success. They sold 275,000 tickets in the space of under three hours. They’ve even managed to sell out stadiums. Their fans are happy. Their recent documentary was well-received by fans and critics alike. People are already asking if they’re going to record new music again. On paper, their upcoming reunion tour is the most successful thing they’ve ever done. In reality, Gary, Mark, Howard and Jason are all beginning to wonder if they made the right call, agreeing to a reunion tour.

The_ ideas_ for the tour are all there (Mark came up with most of them), but turning those ideas into reality has thus far proven impossible. When you’ve spent nearly ten years hardly performing at all, asking your body to learn ten new choreographies is like learning a new language. It’s _hard_. Your entire body aches. Even Jason and Howard, the group’s professional dancers, are having trouble getting their arms and legs to do what they need them to. Jason has the added complication that he simply thinks too much about everything.

As for Gary, he has barely even _sung _for the past five years. A decade of chart flops and scrutiny led him to hate music-making. He’s still trying to get over that now. Singing still feels foreign to him. He does feel a little more comfortable singing when only Mark, Howard and Jason are there, but he still gets nervous whenever he thinks about singing in front of a live audience again. There was a time he barely even left the house, let alone performed. He already knows that the first night of the tour is going to be the most terrifying thing he’s ever done.

Only Mark seems remotely comfortable performing on stage again, but he’s got other issues that are making things difficult. He _knows_ why nothing seems to be clicking and why Take That currently look like a bunch of four separate individuals instead of a tight-knit band, but he’s too scared to say it out loud. He can’t say it out loud, ever. He’s simply not used to expressing his feelings. When Take That were around in the nineties, the boys hardly talked about their feelings at all. They loved each other dearly in more ways than one, but they never mentioned if they were feeling worried or scared. It just never came up. When you’re in a British male pop band, you eventually get into the habit of having a stiff upper lip and never mentioning how you feel, ever. They never even talked about love.

So when the boys settle down in Mark’s living room on Friday, a fire burning in the hearth, a warm orange glow filling the space, they don’t really speak for a while. They look like a rather miserable bunch: Mark is biting his nails, thinking about how he’s going to tell his mates about what he’s spent the past five days thinking about; Jay is frowning; Gary is nervously tapping his fingers on the side of a sofa (a sad song forming inside his head); and Howard hardly spoke on their way to Mark’s house. Only Mark’s dog seems remotely happy.

When the boys were together the first time round, you could hardly get in a word edgeways. They’d finish each other sentences. They’d fill in the gaps for each other during interviews. They’d make fun of each other. They felt so comfortable being in each other’s presence that they’d touch each other when talking. Now, all of that talking has been replaced by a dangerous silence. They’ll all too busy thinking.

Hearing their choreographer say ‘It’s like you’re not even in the same band together’ hurt the boys deeply. It _does _feel like they’re not in the same band together. They’re all in the same room, performing _Relight My Fire _and _A Million Love Songs _and _Sure_, but they might as well be four soloists. They’ve lost the spark they had.

Mark thinks he knows why. He knows, because he’s had ten years to think about what made being a member of Take That so special and comforting to him. It wasn’t the money or the fame or the girls or the number one singles, but the little things like resting your head on Howard’s shoulder or Gary kissing his ear. He misses small things like that desperately. And the bigger things.

‘I miss how things used to be,’ Mark mumbles. It’s the first time anyone has spoken for ten minutes. ‘I miss – I miss the closeness. How close we were. I think maybe that’s why things aren’t clicking.’

The other three take a moment to think about it. The only sound in the room is the ticking of an antique clock, and the fire burning in the hearth. If Mark listens very carefully, he might be able to hear the sound of his own heartbeat. His heart is beating so fast after saying “I miss the closeness” that he fears it might explode. Being with his mates always makes him feel that way, like his heart is about to burst.

‘I agree,’ Gary says after a minute of thinking-about-it. He’s still doing that fingers-tapping-on-the-armrest thing he does when he’s feeling anxious. ‘I think Kim had a point, telling us we looked like we’re not even in the same band. I feel like I barely know you guys anymore.’

‘Personally, I think we just need to take a couple of hours each week to sit down and just talk to each other,’ Jason suggests. ‘I know that sounds like we’re boring old men, and I suppose we are, in a way, but that’s what this reunion is about, isn’t it? It’s not just about the fans – it’s about us reconnecting. It’s about us picking up where we left off ten years ago.’

‘We’re not going to learn the choreographies quicker by talking about them, Jay,’ Howard quips. He looks tired. He looks like he’s constantly on the verge of reaching out for Gary’s hand on the sofa, only to remove his own fingers at the last minute. ‘We’ve only been at it for a week, anyway. Things can change.’

‘I _know_, How, but you have to admit that perhaps we have lost the chemistry we had ten years ago. No matter how good we become at doing these choreographies, it’ll still look shit if we don’t get to know each other better. We’ll just look like four unrelated individuals showing up at Wembley one day. That’s what you meant, right, Mark?’

Mark shakes his head. Two pink spots have appeared on his cheeks. He grabs a cushion from the sofa and holds it tight to his tummy, pressing away the butterflies. ‘I meant the – the physical closeness. We used to be so _comfortable_. I miss that. I haven’t – I haven’t had that closeness since the band split up.’

They all stare at him.

‘What do you mean?’ asks Jason.

Mark pulls the sleeves of his jumper over his hands. He blabbers, ‘I – I meant when we used to be in the band the first time round and we used to cuddle up to each other in the tour bus and we didn’t mind it when we touched each other even though we were men. I meant when we used to make love all evening and it didn’t matter afterwards.’ He looks at the faces of his band members. They all have confused expressions on their faces. His voice cracks. ‘Don’t you _remember?_’

‘_I _do,’ Gary says, his eyebrows moving into a bushy frown. ‘We _all _do. But they didn’t really mean anything, those evenings, did they? They were just something we did cos it felt nice. They weren’t the reason we were such a good group, those evenings.’

‘Yeah, Mark,’ Howard says, an equally bushy frown on his face. ‘You talk about it as if we was all in _love _or something.’

Now it’s _Mark’s _turn to look confused. It was an unspoken truth within the band that the boys all loved each other unconditionally. They touched and made love as if they were lovers, because that’s what they were. It wasn’t just something they did “cos it felt nice.” There were nights when all they’d do was hold each other at the hotel because it was the only way they could protect themselves from the storm that was brewing outside. There were days when simple kisses turned into more than just kisses. Sometimes they’d make love in a laundry closet while journalists scoured the hotel for a sign of the band. They’d often touch each other during interviews. No-one ever got jealous or upset, because they all loved each other equally.

The fact that Gary, Howard and Jason all seem to have forgotten that truth makes Mark’s heart ache. Why can’t the others see what _he _sees? Has it really been so long since they last performed together that they have forgotten what made Take That so special?

Mark feels the overwhelming desire to head to his room, like a petulant child who didn’t get the present he wanted. He knows that they’ve come here to talk about why things aren’t clicking, but he _knows _why things aren’t clicking. It’s obvious. It’s the other lads who aren’t seeing it.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Mark mumbles. He has become very prickly and moody, which happens only once during a blue moon. ‘You can take the guest rooms, if you want. I don’t really care. We’re not a proper _band_, anyway.’

Mark heads upstairs with the moodiness of a hormonal teenage boy, leaving his bandmates to stare after him until he disappears at the foot of the stairs. Three seconds later, they can hear a door shutting closed.

Howard looks at his remaining two bandmates. ‘What the fuck just happened?’

‘I think we just found out why our rehearsals are going so badly,’ sighs Gary.

****

Mark’s muscles ache so much that it takes him five minutes to change into his pyjamas. He brushes his teeth in his ensuite bathroom, turns off the lights and crawls underneath his duvet feeling like shit. He doesn’t really care whether his mates will still be in his house when he wakes up in the morning. He feels like the world has changed without him realising it.

He really enjoyed being a member of Take That the first time round. He was lucky. He had fun. He did many things most people his age could only dream of doing. He travelled the world. He had a lot of sex. People he’d never even met screamed his name wherever he went. He earned money. A lot of money.

None of the travelling and screaming and money really mattered, though. It didn’t matter at all, compared to what the other boys made him feel. He wasn’t lying when he told the lads he misses the touching. He _loved _the touching. He loved the little forehead kisses Jay used to give him; and that time he and Howard shared a bed and Mark topped; and all the times Gaz squeezed his hand; and when he and Rob stayed up all night and they made each other come all over the bedsheets. He misses being in a position where he could explore his love for men without having to slap a confusing label on it. He misses the warmth and comfort being a member of Take That gave him, because he hasn’t felt that warmth and comfort for years. He’s felt cold ever since the band broke up.

So yes, the boys’ comments did hurt him. So much so that when Mark crawls under his duvet in the dark, he lets his tears come freely. He wishes things would go back to where they were. He wishes he didn’t have to relearn the choreography to songs that make him cringe just listening to them. He wishes his body didn’t ache. He wishes Rob were here, holding his hand and kissing him. He wishes he could go back to the night when he and Jay first kissed. He wishes the band had never broken up.

Mark dozes in and out of consciousness. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep for when he hears a knocking on the door. Disoriented, he straightens and turns on the light. He rubs his eyes. He says, ‘Who’s is it?’ even though he knows the answer already.

‘It’s us.’ Gary’s voice. ‘Me, Howard and Jay. We wanted to apologise to you, mate.’

‘Come in,’ Mark croaks. He hopes he doesn’t look like he’s just been crying. 

In walk all three of his bandmates, looking very solemn and serious. They all sit in different places on Mark’s king-sized bed. It looks like a very strange sleepover, except Mark is the only one who is in his pyjamas. He pulls up his duvet, hyper-conscious of the thin material of his pyjama top.

‘We’ve been thinking about what you said earlier,’ Gary says (nervously tapping his fingers on the bed), ‘and we reckon you’ve got a point. We’ve lost something important, we have.’

‘Not lost,’ adds Jay. He’s sitting closest to Mark, his long legs taking up quite a lot of space on the bed. ‘It’s still there – we simply forgot. In the process of leaving the band and living our own lives, we forgot about the little moments that made us so special. I think that we’ve perhaps taken those moments for granted.’

‘Exactly. I was wrong when I said all those evenings didn’t matter,’ Gary says apologetically. ‘They clearly did. To all of us. Cos obviously we’ve all been physical with people since—’

‘Especially _me_,’ Howard quips.

‘Especially Howard, cos he’s so handsome,’ Gary goes on, blushing somewhat (Howard still makes him feel nervous in the best way), ‘but it’s not really the same, is it? It’s a different feeling when you’re in a band and you’re so tight that you feel comfortable making love to each other. Thinking about it now, they made me feel like we could survive anything, those nights we spent just holding each other at the hotel.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Mark sniffles. ‘You say you agree with me, but what does that_ mean_?’

‘I’m saying that maybe we need to remind ourselves of what we’ve lost,’ Gary says.

‘Exactly,’ Howard says. He runs his hands across Mark’s duvet, lost deep in thought. ‘If we are to perform again, we need to be the same band we was ten years ago. We need to accept that maybe we was in love with each other all along.’

Mark gives a sad shake of his head. ‘But the world has _changed_. Time has moved on. We can never go back there.’

‘I think we can,’ Gary says. He smiles. ‘As long as we all still want it.’

‘_I _do,’ says Howard.

‘So do I,’ says Jay. He reaches out to squeeze Mark’s hand, and for a second Mark would swear that he’s back in February 1995, when the boys would spend every single night huddled together in a quiet corner of a hotel, showering Mark in kisses because he couldn’t stop crying. One night, when things were particularly bad, they all took turns giving Mark head. Why? Because they could, and because they all desperately wanted to make Mark feel better. Just like tonight.

‘Just give us the word, Mark,’ Jay says, ‘and we will take you back to how things used to be. We will become the band we were always destined to be.’

‘And you promise you’ll stay? All night?’

‘All night,’ Jay says. He runs his thumb across the back of Mark’s hand. Mark almost melts. ‘What do you think, Mark? Do you still want us?’

‘Yes,’ Mark splutters. ‘_Yes._ I’d l-love to go back there. _Please_. It’s the only thing I’ve thought of all week.’

Mark finds himself crying again tonight, surrounded by mates, but not because he is sad. He is crying because Jay has just dipped down to kiss him, and it’s the softest thing he’s ever felt. It feels both familiar and new: familiar because of how many times he’s touched those lips already; new because Jay’s stubble is scratching his cheek.

Then follow different mouths. Mark can feel Howard kissing his neck, and Gary pecking his ear. He can feel his pyjama top going, and two pairs of hands touching his chest all over. Gary’s hands are the large ones – the hands that squeeze and probe him all over. Howard has the shy pair of hands, taking more time than Gary to re-familiarise himself with the skinny body he used to love having under him. 

It still looks the same it did ten years ago.

More pieces of clothing follow. Mark’s bed quickly becomes a mass of naked bodies. Their bodies may hurt and ache, but they still work. They still respond to the things all the different pairs of hands are putting them through.

Mark still gets hard when Howard and Jay take turns kissing his dolphin tattoo and his hard cock below. Jay still remembers the swear words that left Howard’s mouth when they first made love fifteen years ago, in the back of a car, while Mark was watching, his hand inside the front of his boxers, running his thumb over the tip of his cock. Howard still loves hearing the sounds Mark’s mouth makes as his long cock disappears into Jay’s mouth; loud and needy and a just a _bit_ over the top. (Howard reckons one of the best things about fucking Mark is how loud he gets.) Gary still loves being fucked by Howard the most. Mark still prefers being on top. He still gets turned on by riding Jay’s cock while he watches Howard having his way with Gary at the other side of the bed. Gary always becomes adorably useless in bed.

It’s a fucking mess, but it works. There’s never one person who gets the most or least attention: everyone gets an equal share of the love. Everything feels good. Just an hour ago the boys felt like they were heading towards a reunion where they were four individuals instead of a band, but now it feels like they are one person; one heart, beating in unison.

As they switch positions and Howard suddenly finds himself being pinned down by Mark on the bed, a long cock rubbing up against his own (Gary moaning loudly in the background as Jay sinks inside of him), he realises that he should never have told Mark “You talk about it as if we were all in love.” He realises now that they _were _in love with each other. They loved each other more than anything in the world.

Mark was right: the reason their rehearsals have been so shit is because of the connection they were lacking. By making love like they used to, they are back to where they were. Yes, they’re older, and their bodies ache, and learning new choreographies is much harder than it used to be, and frankly they even don’t know whether the reunion tour is going to be a success or not, but one thing hasn’t changed. One thing they _do _know.

They still have an awful lot of love to give to each other.


End file.
